This shadow-jumping platformer can’t quite live up to its Nintendo-like gimmick

I’m constantly on the lookout for creative, innovative, and generally exciting new video games to recommend. With the AAA industry growing ever-focused on making fewer, bigger games, it’s up to the smaller studios to take more creative risks and present ideas that push the medium forward. When I played Schim at Summer Game Fest 2022, I thought it had the potential to be one of those titles as this shadow-hopping platformer had a distinct look and feel compared to anything I played before.

That’s not fully the case, even if Schim is admirably inventive. That single gameplay gimmick, where players can only move by jumping into shadows, is immediately novel, especially for its first 10 levels. Schim doesn’t evolve much past that point though, both mechanically and narratively. A great idea that would be a standout in a platformer with more variety feels stretched thin here.

I’ve always had a fascination with games that play around with shadows. Stealth games, in particular, often use shadows and shade as an important mechanic; this year’s Ereban: Shadow Legacy used them to great effect. I appreciate that Schim’s developers thought outside the box, answering the design question about what a platformer where players would jump between the shadows of objects rather than the objects themselves would be like. The answer: It’s visually neat, but incredibly simple from a gameplay perspective.

After the player’s shadow is separated from its human at the start of the adventure, players must slowly follow the human from level to level, although they always leave before the player can catch up. To get there, players have to hop from shadow to shadow and can only do one small jump to slightly correct themselves if they land in a lit-up area. If a gap is too big, players must find a shadow that moves to cover that distance or find one of a few objects, like umbrellas, that they can fling themselves with.

Schim isn’t very punishing, as players typically